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Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Baseball Highlights: 2045 in Tabletop Games
Jul 6, 2019
It’s 2045. Baseball has bored everyone to death (NOT my opinion – GO CUBS GO!). So Big Baseball has turned to employing robots and players have begun to improve their game by adding cybernetic body parts to themselves. This is the future in which I want to live. Editorializing aside, only the best and most exciting players can make in the new bigs. Will your team of Naturals, Cyborgs, and Robots claim victory, or will your players be bound for the minors – or worse, the scrap heap?
Baseball Highlights: 2045 is a dueling card game with an interesting twist. It uses elements of card drafting, hand management, take that, and deck building to weave a satisfying experience that can be enjoyed by baseball fans and non-fans. I will not go into explaining the entire rulebook here, but I do want to touch on some items that turn this into something more than your run-of-the-mill deck builder.
DISCLAIMER: This game has quite a few mini expansions. While we do have all the expansions in our collection, we will only be reviewing the base game (though I am sure there are some promo cards in my “base game”). Should we decide to review the expansions in the future, we will add it here or link to the full review. -T
Each player begins the game with a deck of starter players belonging to a generic team (Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, etc). Each card has a combination of immediate actions, threatened base hits, pawn movement speed, and costs printed on them. By playing a card from your hand on your turn you will threaten a hit, cancel your opponent’s hit(s), and/or attempt to score your runners home. Here’s the twist. The Visitor player will play the first card and potentially threaten a hit. Play then stops and it is the Home player’s turn to try to affect the threatened hit(s) using a card from their hand. If they can cancel the hit, then the Visitor player’s plans are dashed and play returns to them to try to cancel the Home player’s now-threatened hits. This back and forth using different portions of each card is a little awkward to get used to, but after you get the hang of it, becomes a very cool little variation on the simplistic card value comparisons found in WAR.
After you play through your hand of cards and determine the mini-game winner, a phase of the game to draft “free agents” allows players to use icons on the cards to purchase stronger cards from the offer row. If the alternating play of the main game had your head spinning then deciding which of your teammates to replace with free agents will definitely cause some anxiety. But this is how your team improves. Do you get rid of the player that threatens Home Runs but provides you with zero purchasing power or do you oust him to the minors to call up Kris Correa? These are important decisions, coach!
Components. This game is basically a card duel game with player mats and tracking tokens that are completely unnecessary (but very nice). The cards are great quality! The individual player mats are a great place to organize your game cards and components. The pawns are just red, white, and blue wooden pawns. Nothing special there, but the colors are important and symbolize how fast the baserunners are. The components are great, and the insert is functional, so that’s a huge bonus for me.
Is the game good? Quite. I love the back and forth. I LOVE the baseball theme. I love the deck building aspect. I love being able to use this game as a tournament game, though I haven’t yet played it that way. Maybe soon! In any case, this is an excellent game and definitely worth taking a look at and trying for yourself. We at Purple Phoenix Games give this one an over the fence bomb of 9 / 12 (with special guest scorer Tony – I think Josh will like it, but I’m unsure if Bryan will).
Baseball Highlights: 2045 is a dueling card game with an interesting twist. It uses elements of card drafting, hand management, take that, and deck building to weave a satisfying experience that can be enjoyed by baseball fans and non-fans. I will not go into explaining the entire rulebook here, but I do want to touch on some items that turn this into something more than your run-of-the-mill deck builder.
DISCLAIMER: This game has quite a few mini expansions. While we do have all the expansions in our collection, we will only be reviewing the base game (though I am sure there are some promo cards in my “base game”). Should we decide to review the expansions in the future, we will add it here or link to the full review. -T
Each player begins the game with a deck of starter players belonging to a generic team (Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, etc). Each card has a combination of immediate actions, threatened base hits, pawn movement speed, and costs printed on them. By playing a card from your hand on your turn you will threaten a hit, cancel your opponent’s hit(s), and/or attempt to score your runners home. Here’s the twist. The Visitor player will play the first card and potentially threaten a hit. Play then stops and it is the Home player’s turn to try to affect the threatened hit(s) using a card from their hand. If they can cancel the hit, then the Visitor player’s plans are dashed and play returns to them to try to cancel the Home player’s now-threatened hits. This back and forth using different portions of each card is a little awkward to get used to, but after you get the hang of it, becomes a very cool little variation on the simplistic card value comparisons found in WAR.
After you play through your hand of cards and determine the mini-game winner, a phase of the game to draft “free agents” allows players to use icons on the cards to purchase stronger cards from the offer row. If the alternating play of the main game had your head spinning then deciding which of your teammates to replace with free agents will definitely cause some anxiety. But this is how your team improves. Do you get rid of the player that threatens Home Runs but provides you with zero purchasing power or do you oust him to the minors to call up Kris Correa? These are important decisions, coach!
Components. This game is basically a card duel game with player mats and tracking tokens that are completely unnecessary (but very nice). The cards are great quality! The individual player mats are a great place to organize your game cards and components. The pawns are just red, white, and blue wooden pawns. Nothing special there, but the colors are important and symbolize how fast the baserunners are. The components are great, and the insert is functional, so that’s a huge bonus for me.
Is the game good? Quite. I love the back and forth. I LOVE the baseball theme. I love the deck building aspect. I love being able to use this game as a tournament game, though I haven’t yet played it that way. Maybe soon! In any case, this is an excellent game and definitely worth taking a look at and trying for yourself. We at Purple Phoenix Games give this one an over the fence bomb of 9 / 12 (with special guest scorer Tony – I think Josh will like it, but I’m unsure if Bryan will).
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BadgerMuffin (48 KP) rated Zombicide in Tabletop Games
Jun 3, 2019
Simple to Setup (2 more)
Easy to Learn
Lots of Online Stories
This Game Has Everything From ZomA to Zombie
Zombicide, a very simple concept, Survive and Escape.
Each character has a Specific set of Skills; Each skill allows players to do extra actions, or allows them escape options. (Wanda has Slippery, this allows her to move through spaces with Zombies).
This game has 3 Phases per Character; Move, Search, Attack.
As you kill Zombies your characters level up, gaining new skills. However you need to balance this as when one of your teammates levels up, more zombies spawn each turn.
This concept is fantastic and makes you think before you kill.
The game is high quality and printed on thick card and the minis are well detailed. The box it is provided in is also high quality, however I would suggest getting something to store the mini's as the plastic packaging they come in is rather weak.
Gameplay is simple to pickup, however this should really be player Sobre as gameplay does require some thought.
TL;DR
-Good Fun
-Easy to Pickup
-Requires Thought
-Worth Getting Expansions
Each character has a Specific set of Skills; Each skill allows players to do extra actions, or allows them escape options. (Wanda has Slippery, this allows her to move through spaces with Zombies).
This game has 3 Phases per Character; Move, Search, Attack.
As you kill Zombies your characters level up, gaining new skills. However you need to balance this as when one of your teammates levels up, more zombies spawn each turn.
This concept is fantastic and makes you think before you kill.
The game is high quality and printed on thick card and the minis are well detailed. The box it is provided in is also high quality, however I would suggest getting something to store the mini's as the plastic packaging they come in is rather weak.
Gameplay is simple to pickup, however this should really be player Sobre as gameplay does require some thought.
TL;DR
-Good Fun
-Easy to Pickup
-Requires Thought
-Worth Getting Expansions
Entertainment Editor (1988 KP) rated The Castles of Burgundy in Tabletop Games
Mar 7, 2018
The Castles of Burgundy Review
I was somewhat disappointed with the components of this game. While the price point isn’t very high, the game still feels a little cheaply made. For most people, the main complaint with The Castles of Burgundy is the player mats. They seem to be made of a light card stock, rather than standard cardboard. They feel quite flimsily and seem like they could tear or bend fairly easily. The artwork for this game is also somewhat bland. The colors have a little bit of low-saturation feel to them and the artwork is not particularly impressive. I would like to note that you do get a lot of tokens with this game. There are about 164 hex tokens that will be used in the game, a handful of dice and some other miscellaneous tokens. This does make setup a bit of a chore, as there is a lot to keep organized. I’d recommend one of those plano storage boxes if you are going to play this game a lot.
Original Rating: 2.5
Reviewer: Tony Mastrangeli
Read the full review here: https://www.boardgamequest.com/the-castles-of-burgundy-review/
Original Rating: 2.5
Reviewer: Tony Mastrangeli
Read the full review here: https://www.boardgamequest.com/the-castles-of-burgundy-review/
The Marinated Meeple (1853 KP) rated Mini Golf King - Multiplayer in Apps
Jul 25, 2018
Graphics are good (5 more)
Physics engine seems solid
Fun head to head gameplay
Collecting jewels is the tie breaker
there are little adjustments to the courses with rails, launchers, pop up blockers and other things like that.
wind is always changing and shifting.
upgrades to the clubs don't seem to have any effect (the math isn't obvious) (1 more)
constant begging for money with paid upgrades are a bit more than usual
My new current favorite game app.
I tend to go thru a game a month, I jump on play semi constantly, and then hit a wall, get bored and move on to something else, rarely does a game stay on my phone longer than 2 months. This one I really like so far, it's been about 2 weeks... it feels a little like playing poker, in that you both pay the ente and then the winner takes the pot.... also the best player doesn't always win, there is enough luck going on that you can take a great shot that goes sideways, or a bad shot that ends up better than it should... but for the most part skill wins. it's a good solid game.
Sam Hill (23 KP) rated Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle in Video Games
Jun 20, 2019
I purchased the game having viewed only the trailers and being a huge fan of the X-Com series which it looks, and feels, very much like.
I found the graphics and overall visual tone of the game to be fantastic. The merging of Rabbids and Mario themes has been done cleverly in a manner which does not feel forced.
The humour largely works, in a cartoonish and slightly childish way and the story is enough to carry you through the single player despite not being massively deep, and being very linear.
The mechanics also work quite well, with one slight caveat. The levels themselves play more like a puzzle game than a strategy, there very much is a right way to do each level and a wrong way. If you make a wrong step then you may need to restart the level instead of finding a way to fix it as you go.
All in all the game is of a high quality and entertaining, and is well worth its price tag
I found the graphics and overall visual tone of the game to be fantastic. The merging of Rabbids and Mario themes has been done cleverly in a manner which does not feel forced.
The humour largely works, in a cartoonish and slightly childish way and the story is enough to carry you through the single player despite not being massively deep, and being very linear.
The mechanics also work quite well, with one slight caveat. The levels themselves play more like a puzzle game than a strategy, there very much is a right way to do each level and a wrong way. If you make a wrong step then you may need to restart the level instead of finding a way to fix it as you go.
All in all the game is of a high quality and entertaining, and is well worth its price tag
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